Eritrea and Ethiopia
The present war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which has now gone on for ten years, provides a further illustration of the same thesis. Eritrea is an artificial country created by the Italians in 1890. The territory is a small one, a little smaller than England. Ecologically it is made up of two distinct areas, the central mountainous area containing the capital, Asmara, and the lowland area bordering the Red Sea.
The former was once part of the Christian kingdom of the Tigre, and its inhabitants are ethnically Tigreans and, like their brothers, who have been incorporated into the Ethiopian empire, they have embraced Christianity. The latter area is inhabited largely by Sudanese and Danakils and also by some Tigreans. They have been governed successively by Turks, Egyptians and the Sudanese followers of the Mahdi. They speak Arabic and have embraced Islam. So once again we are faced with a totally artificial political unit that can only be maintained by force.
After the war, a Four Power Commission, consisting of the Soviet Union, Britain, France and the USA, decided to federate it with Ethiopia. They could not have taken a more irresponsible decision: firstly, because an artificial country such as Eritrea could never be a sound building block for a satisfactory federation; secondly, because Ethiopia is an artificial creation, being, in effect, the empire of the Amharas, over the Gallas in the South, the Somalis in the East, the Tigreans in the North, the Danakils along the Red Sea plains; and a host of small tribes that fall into none of these different categories. In addition, one cannot advantageously federate so small a political unit as Eritrea with so massive a state as Ethiopia.
Predictably, the federation was of short duration. Ethiopia took over more and more power and by 1955, the federation existed in name only. A revolt was inevitable. It started among the Moslems of Western Eritrea, who set up the Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELF). This quickly split up into two rival factions, which, though we are never told it, represent the two separate nations that inhabit that territory.
The war is likely to drag on for a long time. If the Eritreans are ever subdued, it can be predicted with confidence, that they will rise again when the opportunity presents itself. Were they eventually to obtain their independence their problems would still not be over. The two nations that inhabit the Eritrean territory would soon be in conflict and this conflict would not be resolved until the territory were split up into its natural ecological and ethnic regions.
Back to topAngola
Angola is of course another completely artificial creation, though a very old one since the Portuguese set it up as a colony as far back as the 16th century. The largest of the many nations that inhabit this territory is that of the Ovimbundu, with a population of 1.5 million people. They live in the central highlands and have been Christians for a very long time. The second largest is that of the Kimbundu with a population of about 1.2 million centred around Luanda, the capital. The third biggest is that of the Bakongo, the heirs of the ancient kingdom of the Congo, that was broken up in the 18th century. Their territory has been carved up by the colonial powers, so that some of the Bakongo people are now citizens of Angola, others of Zaire and still others of Congo Brazzaville.
Another important nation inhabiting the Angolan territory is that of the Chokwe-Lunda, whose ancestors created the Lunda Empire. They live in North East Angola, astride the border with Katanga. The Southern part of the territory is inhabited by the Cuanhama tribes, which are part of the Ovambo nation that, as we have seen, spreads across the border of South West Africa-Namibia.
Ever since the colony of Angola was first set up, these various nations have constantly revolted against their colonial masters. War was a natural state of things in Angola from the very start. The current war, however, began in 1961. It was started by the Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola (MPLA) in the Luanda area and the Uniao das Populacoes de Angola (UPA) in the North. The former, which has now come to power, traces its descent to the Partido da Luta dos Africanos de Angola (PLUA), which in turn grew out of the Partido Communista de Angola (PCA).
The MPLA, as opposed to most of the political movements we have considered so far, is not a tribal grouping but an urban movement, consisting of European separatists, Mestico intellectuals and a few urbanised and westernised Africans, and it is for this reason that it has always failed, and always will fail, to obtain the support of the tribes which make up the vast majority of the inhabitants of Angola.
The other political movements in Angola are, on the other hand, purely tribal. The Frente Nacional de Libertacao de Angola (FNLA) for instance, traces its descent to the Uniao das Populacoes do Norte de Angola (UPNA), which was originally set up with the goal of restoring the old kingdom of the Congo, and which was later transformed into a theoretically multi-tribal movement, the Uniao das Populacoes de Angola by Holden Roberto, and merged with the Partido Democractico Angolan (PDA), which was based on the Zombo tribe of the Bakongo.
The FNLA’s multi tribal facade was always very thin. The movement was from the first, hostile to the settlers and to the urbanised blacks and was often accused by the Portuguese and the MPLA of planning genocide against the Mulattos. The leadership of the FNLA government in exile, the Governo Revolutionario de Angola no Exilio (GRAE), was indeed multi-tribal but the bulk of the membership was always Bakongo.
In any case, the membership did not remain multi-tribal for long. The foreign minister, Jonas Savimbi, who was an Ovimbundu, accused Roberto of tribalism, resigned and set up his own political movement, UNITA, which of course is just as tribal as the FNLA or GRAE but happens to be based on the Ovimbundu and the Ovambo tribes rather than on the Bakongo.
It is because of its association with the Ovambos that UNITA is being helped by SWAPO across the border in South West Africa-Namibia, much to the chagrin of their Russian backers who, as everybody knows, have financed and armed the MPLA in Luanda and have thereby come to control the ‘legitimate’ government of this artificial state.
It is important to realise that the countries we have considered are in no way exceptional. What I have said about them could also be said of the newly independent countries of Africa and of Asia for that matter. This means that both these continents are condemned to be ravaged by increasingly murderous wars, until such time as we accept the essential principle that tribes or nations should be allowed to govern themselves, rather than be subjected to the arbitrary rule of the larger tribes or nations that dominate the artificial states that we have helped set up, to satisfy what are nothing more than short term political and economic requirements.
That we should not have accepted this essential principle is all the more surprising in view of the recent European experience, which is much more similar to the African one than we would like to admit.
Back to topEurope
Indeed, practically all the European states of today are artificial creations, made up of nations whose separate identity is largely ignored. For a long time, European people, preoccupied as they have been with purely economic considerations, have been willing to see their ethnic identity submerged in a vast anonymous mass society and to be little more than ‘faces in the crowd’. Increasingly, today they want to be part of a real society in whose cultural life and in whose government they can actively participate. Not surprisingly, autonomist movements are gaining strength in almost every European State.
In Spain, Catalan nationalists have been active for decades and today the Basques are even more so. Their action has recently forced the central government to provide the nations that inhabit the Spanish territory, with a measure of self-government that is undoubtedly a prelude to still greater political decentralisation.
In France, autonomist movements are increasingly active among the Corsicans and the Bretons and in Britain, we are witnessing the development of powerful nationalist movements in Scotland and Wales and even in Cornwall.
In Northern Ireland, the hostility between two different ethnic groups, the indigenous Irish on the one hand and the descendants of the 17th century Scots immigrants on the other, has already led to the deaths of thousands of people. The ethnic basis of this crisis is never even mentioned. Instead it is passed off as a purely religious dispute between Catholics and Protestants. Indeed, the reason is that in the present ideological climate, it is not politically expedient that these differences be accommodated, so instead they are ignored and it is on the altar of this political expediency that young English soldiers and innocent Irish civilians are sacrificed almost daily.
National unity, we persuade ourselves, must everywhere be preserved at all costs. Breaking up countries into smaller areas we regard as totally impractical. To begin with, these areas would not be able to defend themselves against an external aggressor. This, of course, is not necessarily true. They could associate themselves to form a confederation as did the Swiss communes who thereby succeeded in preserving their independence for centuries, far more successfully than did many of their larger neighbours.
Today, if Pakistan is to defend itself against the new Russian threat from Afghanistan, its most sensible course is to grant the Baluchis, whose territory the Russians quite clearly covet, since it borders the Indian Ocean, that measure of autonomy that they demand. If they do not, then the Baluchis might well cooperate with the Russians against their Punjabi overlords. If they do, then the Baluchis would undoubtedly fight to preserve their newly acquired autonomy, for as Mr. Gladstone said, “there is no barrier like the breasts of freemen”.
Another argument for preserving the present frontiers of Europe is that the natural regions of Europe would not constitute viable economic units. This argument is totally without foundation. There is no reason to suppose that the inhabitants of China, America or the Soviet Union are better off than those of Iceland, Switzerland, Denmark or Luxembourg. Indeed the opposite seems to be true, and the argument for breaking Europe down into its natural regions as Leopold Kohr pointed out so convincingly in his classic The Breakdown of Nations, are overwhelming.
Significantly enough, Federal Germany was divided up by the allies into eleven Lander each with a high degree of local autonomy, with the avowed intention of weakening her. Needless to say, this measure had the opposite effect, indeed, as Denis de Rougemont, the eminent Swiss writer and advocate of Federalism points out,
“this federal and regional form of government goes a long way towards explaining the political, economic and social recovery of Germany.”
This is even truer of Switzerland, which, again as Denis de Rougemont notes, has
“for six or seven centuries provided the image of an exemplary federation of historic regions which find in their union – strictly limited to certain public functions – the guarantee of their autonomy.”
Switzerland is indeed socially and politically the most successful country in Europe. It is a loose association of communes or Gemeinde, that during the Middle Ages joined together voluntarily in order to better protect themselves against feudal domination.
These communes have much in common with African tribal groups. Like them, they are governed by an open assembly of the menfolk; the communal land is held in common by its members; the communes are social not just administrative units, a man remains a member of his Burgergemeinde, regardless of where he decides to settle; and it is to his Burgergemeinde and not to any State bureaucracy that he must turn when in need.
What is more, to become a Swiss citizen he must first be accepted as a citizen of a commune and of a canton, which means that the Swiss state is not composed of any anonymous mass of isolated individuals, as are most industrial countries today, but of semi-autonomous cantons, themselves made up of semi-autonomous communes, themselves composed of families and individuals.
One cannot stress too strongly the fact that these communes and cantons joined together voluntarily to form the Swiss Confederation. They participate actively in this federation on an equal footing. They are not dominated by any one group and if, in certain instances, they feel that they are, then they can break away and form their own canton, just as the French speaking people of the Jura recently did, so as to avoid being dominated by the German speaking people of the canton of Berne.
It is only in these conditions that larger, stable political units can be built up. As Omo Fadaka writes,
“No one national group cherishes the idea of being ruled by the other. What they desire most is to find a formula for living together in a poly-ethnic society. The only way to do this is for the different national groups to be allowed to develop separately without fear of political domination of one section by the other. There is no way of removing this fear other than by granting them complete political autonomy. Once this fear is removed, full economic, social and cultural co-operation could well lead to that unity which has eluded the country so far.”
In Europe, people are now slowly beginning to see the light. In Belgium, for instance, a new project is being studied to divide the country into four regions, one Walloon, one Flemish, one German and one composed of the ethnically mixed population of Brussels. What is more, much of the power would be delegated to sub-regions made up of associated communes.
The Council of Europe too, is beginning to show greater interest in the concept of federalism. Recently, a meeting was held under its auspices to study the natural regions that cut across present state boundaries. A typical one is the Regio Basiliensis which includes Alsace, Baden and the Swiss Canton of Basle.
The inhabitants of these areas are ethnically related, being descended from the Germanic tribe of the Allemani, and speak a similar German dialect. They have recently been made aware of their common identity by the threat to their biological survival posed by the nuclear industry, that proposes to put up no fewer than 16 nuclear power stations in their midst; 6 in the French section of this region, 5 in the Swiss and 5 in the German – a nation is indeed made by its enemies rather than by its friends.
Another such region, at present being studied by the Institut Universitaire d’Etudes Europeenes in Geneva, is the Lemano-Alpine region, made up of much of French speaking Switzerland, the Franche Comte, Savoy, the Val d’Aosta and parts of the French departments of the Isere and of the Ain. Another is the Triestine region made up of the Friuli, Carinthia and Slovenia. In all, 15 such regions have been identified and it is hoped that they will slowly be allowed to become effective units for certain social and economic purposes at least.
It is only by encouraging such developments, and by generally decentralising power from the governments running the artificial countries of Europe, to those of the real nations that compose them, that stability and peace can be assured. In the meantime, it is very irresponsible to set up political structures in Africa and elsewhere in what was once our Colonial Empire, that do not reflect social realities, and whose eventual dismemberment into their natural regions is inevitable and, what is more, at the cost of a great deal of unnecessary human misery.
In Africa, some people are beginning to see the light. In Zimbabwe Rhodesia Chief Kaisa Ndiweni has founded the United National Federal Party which did unexpectedly well in the May 1979 elections. Chief Ndiweni has emphasised the totally artificial nature of the newly independent African countries and he fully realises that Rhodesia is no exception to the rule. His party is committed to dividing Rhodesia into two semi-autonomous regions, one for the Shona and the other for the Ndebele. The regions would be but loosely associated to form a federation, the federal government being responsible for defence and other functions that are best fulfilled at that level.
Chief Ndiweni has obtained considerable support for this scheme from among the Ndebele people, but predictably, the majority of the Shona are against it. However, it is only if Chief Ndiweni’s ideas are rapidly accepted by the majority of the people of Zimbabwe that it will be possible to prevent the chaos and bloodshed that otherwise lie in store.
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